US government pirated military software, must pay $50 million to software developer

The US government is being ordered to pay $50 million to Apptricity for violating a licensing agreement and spreading Apptricity’s software among its military ranks without actually paying for it.

The software, which tracks supplies and troops, was authorized for use on five of the military’s servers and thousands of workstations. Apptricity later discovered that its software was installed on a 100 servers and 11,000 workstations, at which time they went ahead and filed a lawsuit against the government. (Yes, we know abusing licensing terms isn’t software piracy in the strictest sense… but we are labeling it as software piracy nonetheless.)

Initially, Apptricity wanted $224.5 million in damages but they ended up getting $50 million. It comes to no surprise that Apptricity’s co-founder Tim Garcia is fine with the outcome, feeling that things were handled very professionally and knowing that, even after everything that’s happened, the military will still be one of their clients.

“There was a realization that a mistake had been made, and it needed to be fixed,” Garcia said to the Dallas Morning News. “It’s like a marriage. Sometimes you really don’t want to be around each other, but it doesn’t mean you are going to break it off.”